Directed by Mikio Naruse
17 Episodes
In this new program, critic Imogen Sara Smith introduces one of Japanese cinema’s classical masters—a virtuoso of melodrama who specialized in portraying the personal and social struggles of women with supreme sensitivity. In a career that spanned four decades, he directed nearly ninety films, including silent dramas like APART FROM YOU, EVERY-NIGHT DREAMS, and STREET WITHOUT END, in which he poignantly etched the experiences of working women carrying on in the face of everyday disappointments and compromises in an often cruelly sexist society. Continuing to explore these themes throughout his career, Naruse’s artistry reached its zenith in the 1950s, when, working with renowned leads like Hideko Takamine, Kinuyo Tanaka, and Setsuko Hara, he directed a string of devastating melodramas—including LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS, FLOATING CLOUDS, FLOWING, and WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS—that elevated the genre to heartrending new heights, abetted by a feeling for delicate, rhythmic editing that could build with subtle but shattering emotional force.
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16:16Episode 1Spotlight on Mikio Naruse
Episode 1
The following interview with scholar Imogen Sara Smith was recorded in 2024.
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1:51:25Episode 2When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Episode 2
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1960 • Japan
Starring Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Reiko DanWHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse’s finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko (played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine), who works as a bar hoste...
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2:03:49Episode 3Floating Clouds
Episode 3
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1955 • Japan
Starring Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Mariko Okada“Short is the life of flowers, infinite their sorrows . . .” Director Mikio Naruse’s most famous film in Japan is a haunting portrait of obsessive love in a ruined world. Set amid the bombed-out landsca...
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28:46Episode 4Flunky, Work Hard
Episode 4
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1931 • Japan
Starring Isamu Yamaguchi, Tomoko Naniwa, Seiichi KatoMikio Naruse’s earliest available film, FLUNKY, WORK HARD is the rare work by the director not to center around female characters. It is a charming, breezy short concerning an impoverished insurance sal...
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1:18:56Episode 5No Blood Relation
Episode 5
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1932 • Japan
Starring Shinyo Nara, Yukiko Tsukuba, Hisako KojimaIn NO BLOOD RELATION, a gripping early example of Mikio Naruse’s cinematic boldness, featuring a screenplay by Yasujiro Ozu’s famed collaborator Kogo Noda, an actress returns to Tokyo after a successful s...
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1:00:29Episode 6Apart from You
Episode 6
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1933 • Japan
Starring Mitsuko Yoshikawa, Akio Isono, Sumiko MizukuboFor APART FROM YOU, Mikio Naruse turned his camera on the lives of working women, which he would continue to do throughout his long career. In this gently devastating drama, a critical breakthrough fo...
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1:04:23Episode 7Every-Night Dreams
Episode 7
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1933 • Japan
Starring Sumiko Kurishima, Tatsuo Saito, Teruko KojimaIn the formally ravishing EVERY-NIGHT DREAMS, set in the dockside neighborhoods of Tokyo, a single mother works tirelessly as a Ginza bar hostess to ensure a better life for her young son—until her lon...
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1:28:43Episode 8Street Without End
Episode 8
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1934 • Japan
Starring Setsuko Shinobu, Akio Isono, Hikaru YamanouchiMikio Naruse’s final silent film is a gloriously rich portrait of a waitress, Sugiko, whose life, despite a host of male admirers and even some intrigued movie talent scouts, ends up taking a suffocat...
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1:27:15Episode 9Ginza Cosmetics
Episode 9
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1951 • Japan
Starring Kinuyo Tanaka, Ranko Hanai, Yuji HoriSomething of a Japanese answer to the neorealist movement concurrently flowering in Europe, Mikio Naruse’s lyrical, quietly moving portrait of everyday endurance in Tokyo’s bustling Ginza district recounts a f...
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Repast
Episode 10
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1951 • Japan
Starring Setsuko Hara, Ken Uehara, Yukiko ShimazakiA watershed work in the career of master director Mikio Naruse, REPAST marked the beginning of his extraordinary late-career renaissance. The first of a string of adaptations that Naruse would direct base...
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Mother
Episode 11
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1952 • Japan
Starring Kinuyo Tanaka, Kyoko Kagawa, Eiji OkadaRather more upbeat (and at times even lighthearted) than the transcendentally tragic melodramas he is best known for, Mikio Naruse’s bittersweet family portrait features a quietly masterful performance from ...
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Wife
Episode 12
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1953 • Japan
Starring Mieko Takamine, Ken Uehara, Rentaro MikuniOne of six films that director Mikio Naruse adapted from the novels of Fumiko Hayashi, WIFE is an incisive, unsparing portrait of a decade-old marriage in the process of disintegrating. Opening and closin...
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1:41:33Episode 13Late Chrysanthemums
Episode 13
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1954 • Japan
Starring Haruko Sugimura, Ken Uehara, Sadako SawamuraSuffused with the sense of autumnal melancholy and nostalgia that its title suggests, LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS is one of director Mikio Naruse’s most perfectly realized works. In a rare starring role, the gr...
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1:34:49Episode 14Sound of the Mountain
Episode 14
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1954 • Japan
Starring Setsuko Hara, Ken Uehara, So YamamuraMikio Naruse’s THE SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN (YAMA NO OTO) was one of the director’s personal favorites among his own movies. The story concerns a woman, Kukiko (Setsuko Hara), trapped in a loveless marriage to Ot...
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Flowing
Episode 15
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1956 • Japan
Kinuyo Tanaka, Isuzu Yamada, Hideko TakamineOne of director Mikio Naruse’s most sublime achievements traces the fortunes of a geisha house struggling to survive in the face of a changing society. As seen through the eyes of the establishment’s new maid (K...
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Yearning
Episode 16
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1964 • Japan
Starring Hideko Takamine, Yuzo Kayama, Mitsuko KusabueOne of Mikio Naruse’s supreme achievements, this transcendent melodrama weaves a heartrending story of an extended family tragedy growing out of the Second World War. The great Hideko Takamine stars as...
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1:48:18Episode 17Scattered Clouds
Episode 17
Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1967 • Japan
Starring Yoko Tsukasa, Yuzo Kayama, Mitsuko KusabueMelodrama master Mikio Naruse’s final film is one of his most majestically melancholy works, a haunting romantic tragedy about two lost souls drawn together into a seemingly impossible relationship. After...
